Long-term field measurements of thermal comfort performance of an occupancy-based climate control technology

This study evaluated thermal comfort performance of an Occupancy-Based Climate Control (OBCC) technology based on one-year of detailed thermal comfort and occupancy measurements in twenty guest rooms of the case-study hotel in Washington, D.C. At the case-study hotel, a card-key based climate control system was used to initiate a temperature set-back to 15.6°C in the winter and to 26.7°C in the summer in the guest rooms that were studied. The analysis indicated that an implementation of uniform, steady set-back or set-up temperatures across all the guest rooms of the hotel created periods of uncomfortable conditions in some guest rooms. This observation was due to the different, dynamic heat balance of the twenty guest rooms of the building, which was affected by the location of the guest rooms, ventilation rates, vacant periods, other conditioning mechanisms, and external weather conditions.